


Back To Normal

by ThanksForListening



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Kinda, Post-Canon, Root | Samantha Groves Lives, Songfic, brief mention of nightmares, root is alive fight me about it, yes this is my second fic based on a song from Lover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 05:24:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20512067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThanksForListening/pseuds/ThanksForListening
Summary: "Root didn’t need to look at the clock next to their bed to know that she should have been asleep by now."or, Root worries about post-Samaritan Shaw at 3 in the morning.





	Back To Normal

**Author's Note:**

> ok YES i did base this off how emotional i get hearing "soon you'll get better" by taylor swift but that song is very much about cancer/a bad medical diagnosis and this fic....isn't. so like is it a songfic? i guess? its more based on the emotion and the feeling of the song than the specific lyrics. 
> 
> ok i'll shut up now.

Root didn’t need to look at the clock next to their bed to know that she should have been asleep by now. 

Sameen was asleep. For now, at least. The nightmares had improved exponentially, but that didn’t mean they’d stopped showing up, stopped her from waking up in a sweat, hand instinctively reaching for the spot behind her ear. Still, it was better. Shaw could almost always fall back asleep now, even if Root never did. 

Tonight’s nightmare had already passed, which explained why she was still up now, staring at the snoring woman next to her. God, it had been such a little thing. Nothing, really, not compared to what they’d been through, to how it used to be. But when Shaw had woken up, when she’d looked over desperately toward her, she’d nearly exhaled her name. And there was something about the way she said it, her words filled with relief and disbelief and a drowsy sense of emotion that you could only find in the period between night and day, that had shattered something inside of her. 

As quietly as she could, she slipped into the bathroom. She stared at the mirror, the lights still off, and tried to imagine her reflection staring back at her. What it might look like. Who it might be. What version of herself existed right now, in the moment that no one else saw. 

“Are you okay?”

Root nodded, not sure how She was seeing her but not particularly caring. 

“You don’t sleep enough. Roughly four hours a night.”

“It’s fine,” she whispered. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“How much has Sameen been sleeping?”

“On average, six and a half hours a night.”

“Then I’m perfect.”

“Root,” She said, and she still hadn’t quite gotten used to hearing her own voice talk back to her, even though she’d given her approval of Her new identity. “You can’t take care of her if you don’t take care of yourself.”

“You sound like Sameen.”

“Would it help to hear it from her? To hear me as her?”

“No,” Root said too quickly. 

“Continuing this pattern of behavior would—“

“I just,” Root interrupted, her voice cracking on the end of the word. She took a breath, Her silence a cue to continue. “I just need her to be okay. I need to know that it’ll get better, that it’ll go back to normal one day. That she’ll be able to wake up without wondering if she’d ever really gotten out, if we’d ever won.”

“I can’t promise you that. Without understanding the extent of the psychological damage, the specific elements of the delusions, I—“

“I know, I know.” Root sighed. “You can’t predict this one.”

“I’m sorry.” Root wondered when she’d gotten used to Her so easily expressing feelings of sympathy, empathy, guilt, such deeply human emotions. 

“Do you think—“ she started, “Do you think I’ve been doing the right thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“With Sameen. Pretending like we’re fine, even when every night goes like this.”

“I can’t answer that. Based on my lack of knowledge surrounding her state of mind, I can’t predict whether this pattern of behavior will result in—“

“I know,” she said again, her grip on the sink tightening. “I just keep feeling like I’m faking it. Painting the sky on the ceiling, pretending the sun’s out, when just outside the window it’s a hurricane. I feel like everything’s going to fall apart one day. Like I’m going to wake up and she’ll be gone, and it’ll all be my fault.” Tears rolled down her face but she ignored them. “It feels like it's only a matter of time before I lose her. And what am I supposed to do then? Who am I without her?”

“I don’t know how to help you,” She said, and Root could hear the guilt that laced Her words. 

Root closed her eyes. “I just need to know that she’ll be okay. That she’ll get better.”

“I can’t predict that.”

“I know,” Root said, “but can you say it anyway?”

For three seconds, it was silent. Then, softly disrupting the quiet, Root heard Her. “She’ll be okay. It’ll get better.”

Root exhaled. “Thank you,” she whispered. She opened her eyes, looked to her right, through through the crack in the door. Shaw still slept, her body rising and falling with ease. 

“Promise me you’ll never tell her about this,” Root said, eyes on the woman she loved. The woman she’d die for. The woman she’d live for.

“I promise,” She said, and part of her wondered whether She was lying, whether Root would regret teaching Her that particular skill, but instead she took a deep breath, opened the door, and went back to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments give me life. also its very difficult to write when you have three characters, all of whom use the "she" pronoun, without it getting confusing. Let me know if i succeeded in making sense lol.
> 
> if you too would love to get emotional about root and shaw hit me up on tumblr @thanks--for--listening.


End file.
